On Tuesday 11th September almost 300 workers were killed when a fire ripped through the Ali Enterprises factory in Karachi, Pakistan. At the time of the fire the factory was producing jeans for the German low cost retailer, KIK, which has more than 3000 stores in eight European countries.

The Clean Clothes Campaign today express their shock and outrage at the failure of German company KIK to ensure that workers in its supplier factories are employed in safe working conditions after it was confirmed that Ali Enterprises, which last week burnt down killing almost 300 people, was producing jeans for the low-cost retailer.

AMSTERDAM - German discount giant KIK this week signed an agreement with the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) to make an initial payment to the victims and their families of US$ 1 million for immediate relief, and to negotiate a long term compensation package with all other involved stakeholders.

Tomorrow German cost-cutter KiK discusses compensation for the victims of the collapse at Rana Plaza during the meeting in Geneva. Meanwhile, survivors of the fire at the Ali Enterprises garment factory in Karachi, Pakistan, still await full, long-term and fair compensation. German retailer KiK remains the only known buyer of Ali Enterprises garments.

Geneva, 9 September 2015: On the third anniversary of Pakistan’s worst-ever industrial disaster, global unions IndustriALL and UNI, together with the Clean Clothes Campaign, are calling on a major German retailer to honour its promise to provide long-term compensation to victims.

From 23 to 27 November 2015, Shahida Parveen and Farhat Fatima from Pakistan will visit Berlin to draw attention to the global campaign demanding KiK provide long term compensation to the families affected by the Ali Enterprises factory fire in 2012. Shahida Parveen, a widow of one of the workers who was killed in the fire, intends to deliver her #MakeKikPay petition to KiK representatives during her stay in Germany. She will be accompanied by Farhat Fatima from the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), an organisation that signed a legal agreement with KiK for a negotiated settlement of long-term compensation to the survivors and victims’ families of the Ali enterprises tragedy.

After four years of campaigning and months of negotiations, an agreement has been reached to pay compensation in excess of US$5 million to the survivors and families of workers killed in Pakistan’s worst industrial accident.

More than 250 people died and dozens were injured in a fire at the Ali Enterprises textile factory in Karachi, Pakistan, on 11 September 2012. Only three weeks before, Italian auditor RINA Services S.p.A. certified the factory for abiding to international labour standards. Marking the six year anniversary of the disaster an international coalition of eight human rights, labour and consumer organizations file a complaint to the OECD National Contact Point (NCP) at the Ministry for Economic Development in Rome against RINA, the company that could have prevented hundreds of deaths by doing its work properly.